Large-area displays, such as animated scoreboards for sporting venues, and the like, are, of course, well known in the art. Typically, such displays are of the type known as secondary emission displays, wherein the light emerges from such sources as cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and television type screens. The problem with such displays is that the phosphor light emission from them is limited in intensity, and they therefore typically suffer from low contrast and poor visibility during high ambient lighting conditions.
The use of bimorph light modulators, at least in theory, is known as a means of overcoming some of the aforementioned problems with conventional large-area displays. Such systems are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,844,577 and 5,052,777, both of which were at issue assigned to Sportsoft Systems, Inc. of Burnaby, Canada. The advantage of such systems is that a display using bimorphs is not limited in the intensity of light at each pixel location by the physical nature of any secondary emission type material such as phosphor. Further, such a display can be made very large since the light from the source can be directed to very large numbers of pixels by optical channels such as fiber optic light guides, and there is no need for deflecting an electron beam to raster scan the entire display.
The problem with the approach taken the in the Sportsoft patents, and other like approaches, is that the assembly of such bimorph systems is exceedingly complex and labor intensive, and the result is a system which has difficulty competing in the marketplace. There is thus a need for an improved bimorph system which is simpler than prior art systems, and which lends itself to adaptation to automated manufacturing methods.